Every October across America, haunted houses sprout like weeds to frighten thrill-seekers with a combination of costume amateurs, disorienting layouts, gruesome props, and dodgy lighting. There are rumors, however, of the seedier side of the haunted house business, rumors that speak of real corpses and body parts used as props, convicted criminals or sex offenders employed as actors, and extreme haunts that gleefully push their guests to the utter limit of terror.
Five friends embark on a road trip to search out the most extreme haunted houses, trying to track down the seedier rumors. While their journey looks like it's about to fall flat, it soon becomes clear that they are being followed by people who are perfectly willing to scare them all to death... literally.
The Haunt has come to them... but can they handle it?
The Houses October Built (2014) is a found footage horror film by Bobby Roe, and produced by Zack Andrews, both of whom starred in the movie itself. Filming partially took place in real haunted house attractions, which Roe would later include in a list of "America's Scariest Haunted Houses" that he released as marketing material for the film.
Was followed by a sequel The Houses October Built 2 in 2017.
The first film contains examples of:
- Be Careful What You Wish For: The group were looking for the ultimate in extreme Halloween scares. It found them.
- Buried Alive: The final fate of four of the five protagonists.
- Claustrophobia: Brandy reveals early on the she is severely claustrophobic, making her fate of being buried alive in a cramped coffin particularly sadistic.
- Cliffhanger: The film ends with our protagonists trapped and seemingly being buried alive. The sequel picks up at precisely this point.
- Creepy Doll: One of the stalkers is in full costume and makeup as a ruined porcelain doll.
- Darkness Equals Death: Played for safe scares in the beginning, only to turn horrific at the end as the five are separately pursued through a dark house.
- Deadly Road Trip: The hunt for extreme scares, taking place the five days leading up to and including Halloween.
- Developing Doomed Characters: One of the film's strengths. The cast is likeable enough and enough time is spent with them that the slow escalation builds and builds to a surprisingly intense climax.
- Fanservice: The Halloween themed strip club, featuring mostly nude women wearing scary masks.
- Found Footage Films: The framing device is Bobby making a documentary about extreme haunted houses and his quest to find the most extreme of all of them, including interviews with Haunt performers about the urban legends.
- Freakier Than Fiction: The film itself was largely unscripted, but especially the interviews with Haunt owners and actors. The people who work in the Haunt community year after year have stories far stranger and scarier than anything the fimmakers could have dreamed up.
- Genre-Busting: Both films are less straight horror films then they are adventures that center around Halloween and the Haunt industry. Most of the scares come from the haunts themselves, and the characters have a great deal of fun exploring and talking about these places... right up until it all becomes very scary for real.
- Malevolent Masked Men: The Skull Masks that abduct the protagonists.
- Men Are the Expendable Gender: As things get more tense, the four males of the group show a pretty old-fashioned level of protectiveness towards their sole female member, once hustling her into the RV as they block an aggressive Haunt performer antagonizing them, and after Brandy is cornered in a restroom by two guys, state they cannot allow Brandy to be out of the presence of at least one of the other males. The forces antagonizing the group, of course, do everything in their power to avert this trope.
- Monster Clown: Played for laughs early on as Bobby interviews a haunted house actor dressed as one, but soon turning to terror as they realize a band of scary clowns is following them. Culminates in a scene where the group hears strange noises outside their RV one night, and turn on the headlights to reveal the RV is completely surrounded by clowns. It's a lot scarier than it sounds.
- Nothing Is Scarier: In the end, you are left with no answers about why the Blue Skeleton crew do what they do aside from For the Evulz, let alone who they actually are.
- Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Brandy is cornered in a restroom by two guys (who also grabbed a forgotten video camera from the group) and seem to be preparing to sexually assault her.
- The Remake: Because the film had initially been shot with a very small crew (consisting entirely of just the actors) and in low-definition, when it proved solid enough to earn major distribution and theatrical release, bringing the low-def footage up to standard would be more expensive and complicated than just reshooting the whole movie, so the film was essentially remade with the same cast, a bigger budget, and larger crew.
- Remake Cameo: The theatrical film is probably the only remake which boasts the exact same cast as the original (though two actors essentially swapped roles).
- Screaming Woman: Brandy in the coffin at the end. Justified in that she's claustrophobic, buried alive, and justifiably having a panic attack.
The sequel contains examples of:
- Arc Words: "Seek Out Hellbent." An anagram of "The Blue Skeleton."
- Ate His Gun: Brandy, reeling from the revelation that her so called friends had been her tormentors all along, does this with the gun they've unknowingly presented her with.
- Embarrassing Nickname: Brandy was dubbed "Coffin Girl" by the media circus surrounding The Blue Skeleton's livestream of her being Buried Alive.
- Evil All Along: "Evil" may be a bit harsh (let's not rule it out, though), but Mikey, Bobby, Zack, and Jeff all turn out to have been in on the "buried alive" prank at the end of the previous film, and have been orchestrating the events of this film in league with The Blue Skeleton, all to get really superb freakouts from Brandy. She is extremely displeased to discover this, to put it mildly.
- Face Your Fears: The guys believe Brandy needs to do this, never really understanding how traumatizing the events of the first movie were for her. It does not end well.
- Fake Kill Scare: Once inside Hellbent, the members of The Blue Skeleton "kill" Zack, Mikey, Bobby and Jeff to get Brandy to freak out for the cameras.
- Brandy gets back at them with a faked suicide after Porcelain shows her that her "friends" are in on the whole thing.
- Grievous Bottley Harm: When Brandy is being led through Hellbent by a Blue Skeleton in the dark, she kicks a bottle, which she promptly picks up and uses to knock the Skeleton out.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: After the guys orchestrating all the trauma Brandy has suffered over the last two films, she, with the help of Porcelain, makes them think she's killed herself over the Trauma Conga Line they helped inflict, making her death their fault. Her little way of showing them that traumatizing your friend for a scary prank isn't so much fun when you're the trauma victim.
- Immediate Sequel: The film opens shortly after the first with Brandy being dumped at the side of the road, and the Blue Skeleton member left to hide the coffin being arrested.
- Konami Code: The boys talk about this as they watch Jeff pilot the drone, struggling to remember exactly how the code goes.
- Meaningful Name: Hellbent, in terms of both the name for the film's final Haunt and the subtitle. Aside from being a sick name for a Haunt, "hellbent" means to pursue something with great determination regardless of the consequences, which perfectly encapsulates both films, for the story they tell and the story of how they were made.
- Once More, with Clarity: Brandy, surrounded by Blue Skeletons who place a miniature coffin before her, she opens it to find a gun and starts waving it around, the Skeletons reveal they're her friends and traveling companions, and Brandy puts the gun in her mouth and shoots herself. Then we rewind to Porcelain showing Brandy video of her friends plotting pretty much everything that's happened in both films, showing Brandy the coffin with the gun and blood squib, revealing that Brandy's suicide was faked to do to her "friends" what they've done to her. The video also serves as this trope to the overall events of both films.
- Pet the Dog: The Blue Skeleton, specifically Porcelain, shows Brandy what's been going on and what her friends have been doing to her, and gives her the tools to fake her suicide by gunshot in front of them to get back at them by giving them a taste of their own medicine. Why The Blue Skeleton chose to do this is left unexplained.
- Shown Their Work: All the haunts (except The Blue Skeleton) are real, operating haunts. Anoka, MN really does bill itself as "Halloween Capital Of The World," and really did start making Halloween night an event in a successful attempt to curb annual vandalism (they did not, however, invent trick-or-treating).
- Stupid Evil: Zack, Mikey, Bobby and Jeff not only knowingly lead the traumatized Brandy back into the clutches of The Blue Skeleton, but cooperate with them to make it seem like they're actually out to kill them all this time, and expect the money (which they may or may not even be getting) to make it all better.
- Time Skip: After a brief prologue, the rest of the film takes place a year after the first.
- Twist Ending: The guys have been working with The Blue Skeleton since at least the climax of the first film to traumatize Brandy, and The Blue Skeleton turns on them and gives Brandy the tools to give them a taste of their own medicine.
- Vomit Indiscretion Shot: After the brain-eating contest, Mikey and Bobby are seen hurling in a dumpster. This was not staged; they'd actually eaten grilled cow brains for the contest, and this was the real result.
- With Friends Like These...: It's revealed that Brandy's friends were behind her being buried alive in a coffin in the first film, and they aren't done screwing with her yet.
